WD vs Samsung vs Seagate

[szopen]

I'm wondering what new HDD should I buy. I consider following:

• 
  [*:283b3270a6] HDD 320 Gb SATA-II 300 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 <3320620AS> 7200rpm 16Mb
  [*:283b3270a6] Samsung SpinPoint T133 300 GB [or 320 if exists] (SATA II, [only] 8MB cache, NCQ).
  [*:283b3270a6] Western Digital WD3200KS 320GB 7200 16MB SATA-II
  
  Do you have any experience with above disks? Which is the fastest one? And what about theirs lifetime?
  
  EDIT: So I've just bought WD3200YS. Hope it was good choice. As soon as I receive my new HDD I'll post test results. Thanks for help, all!

 

[htoonthura]

I'm wondering what new HDD should I buy. I consider following:

• 
  [*:e4f4aff15d] HDD 320 Gb SATA-II 300 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 <3320620AS> 7200rpm 16Mb
  [*:e4f4aff15d] Samsung SpinPoint T133 300 GB [or 320 if exists] (SATA II, [only] 8MB cache, NCQ).
  [*:e4f4aff15d] Western Digital WD3200KS 320GB 7200 16MB SATA-II
  
  Do you have any experience with above disks? Which is the fastest one? And what about theirs lifetime?

• 
  
  Hello
  
  if the prices are the same , i would go with seagate.
  
  bye.

 

[maury73]

I never tested the Samsung HD, anyway don't mind about the cache size: 8 or 16MB doesn't make any difference to the latest OSes. On the other side NCQ has a great impact on multi threaded applications (DB, web servers, etc..) but it doesn't speed up consistently games or every day desktop applications.

I tested the 200GB version of Seagate and WD drives: Seagate is a little faster in startup times and when you access large contiguous files (video compression and 3D rendering); WD is much faster in random access as in DB and server applications.

Last but not least, in our company 2 Seagate drives failed after 1 year of operation (12 hours a day), no problem at all with WD drives.

 

[gondo]

I'd go Seagate for sure. Fast, quiet, and the best warranty.

Western Digital is also good, but I'm more biased towards seagate. If you want to spend some money the Western Digital Raptor drives are the way to go. The harddrive is the only mechanical part on the system, everything else is electronic. The faster you make the hard drive the faster your system will be. Your system will seem almost twice as fast with a Raptor drive, while loading & using windows. Not for encoding and stuff which is based on CPU power.

 

[MrsD]

Of those choices Id take the Barracuda. My first choice would be the WD RE series because of warranty, but not the SE.

 

[szopen]

Yeah. Raptors are ultra fast, but also costs a lot of zł [polish dollars ] and are available only in low capacity. I know I can build RAID0 (or RAID0+1) but what I need most is capacity. Maybe in future, I’ll buy raptor and install there my OS [not only Windows but also Linux ]. But, now I see, your choice would be Barracuda.10... I've heard it produces less vibrations than .9 Is this true?

 

[bobbydamm]

From personal experience I would choose Western Digital.
Some of those 'cheap' PC's from '99- 2002 used Seagate exclusively
(E machines, V-Box/Avatar, People PC, you name it.) and I could say for sure that lock-ups weren't too uncommon.
I guess it could be as to where they are made and quality control?
(which factory has the best faultless rate)
I have had the best experience personally with WD HDD.
Samsung is a mixed bag because they seem to get the quality better as the years progress, but if I'm not mistaken they still have a low end production scheme.
Beware.
(On another note, I wouldn't have chosen Maxtor if it wasn't for the spec and the Price. That has been a winner!)

 

[Nitro350Z]

if you want decent performance and a good long lifetime, i would suggest getting a server grade hd, the 7200 rpm ones sell for about the same as the desktop versions maybe 5$ more.

The maxtor maxline III series is my suggestion

 

[szopen]

I heard that some Maxtors were rather poor quality. So the MLIII series is better than WD or Barracuda?

 

[INeedCache]

Maxtor has gotten a bad rap due to manufacturing problems in their DiamondMax 9 series, which was corrected in the 10 series. Maxtor still makes probably the best server drive, the Atlas 15K II. I think you'd be satisfied with any of these drives. The Samsung lags a bit in performance of these three, but it is quietest, and we have found Samsung drives over the last 3 years or so to be quite reliable with no customer complaints, returns, or RMAs on drives we sold. I'm kind of down on WD lately as we have had more failures lately than in the past. Seagates do have the best warranty.

 

[MrsD]

What do you mean Seagate provides the best warranty? All the top models from every brand offer 5 years. Is Seagate now offering more than 5 years :?:

 

[crazypyro]

my personal experience with using Maxtor, WD and Seagate Hard Drives, my personal choice is WD, i'v had my WD HDD for 2yrs now still running flawlessy. in the same amount of time i went through 2 maxtors and 1 seagate.

So out of three i say WD

 

[Nitro350Z]

Its strange that so many have problems with maxtor. I have lots of maxtor harddrives and have never had a problem with them, i still have 2 old 40GB ones and both are running fine.

Like others said, WD makes great drives

one the otherhand i've never had any luck with seagate drives, one after another have failed on me, now have 6 dead seagate drives laying around

 

[clue69less]

Yeah. Raptors are ultra fast, but also costs a lot of zł [polish dollars ] and are available only in low capacity. I know I can build RAID0 (or RAID0+1) but what I need most is capacity. Maybe in future, I’ll buy raptor and install there my OS [not only Windows but also Linux ]. But, now I see, your choice would be Barracuda.10... I've heard it produces less vibrations than .9 Is this true?

By "RE", I don't think he was referring to the Raptor - I think he meant the RAID-specific drive. The OP was talking about ~300GB HDs and right now, Raptors top out at 150.

 

[1stBuild]

Even though you didn't include any Maxtor drive among your candidates, I still want to throw in my advice against them. I have had two Maxtors in my rig. The first one (a 250 GB MaXLine III) started acting up and pretty much died after about 1 month. The second one (a 250 GB DiamondMax 10), which I bought before I started having trouble with the first one, is also already showing signs (clicking accompanied by slower performance). I would have suspected overheating, except I have had an intake fan blowing air over the drives. After I started noticing the problems I have checked the temperature of the HD casings a couple of times, and they have never felt hot.
I'm currently waiting for the replacement for the first drive. I guess it is possible that I have just been unlucky, but I don't really trust Maxtor anymore.

 

[szopen]

So I've just bought WD3200YS. Hope it was good choice. As soon as I receive my new HDD I'll post test results. Thanks for help, all

 

[scorch]

I would go with Western Digital, I have an 8.4 GB that I bought in '99 and used until '05. I also have a 2.5 GB drive in my 486-66 bought that in 1995, it worked fine until 1999 (Stopped using it due to Y2K). Now Ill just have to dig it out of the basement to see if it still works, I will post an edit on this later.

EDIT: Yup, the old 2.5 western digital still works after 5yrs of use and 7 yrs of storage. This old 486-66 still works besides the bios battery error. I forgot that it had win98.

 

[Mike995]

Go Western Digital, they make the best hdds, dont worry about how quiet a hdd is, even an extremly quiet fan would drown out the noise of any modern harddrive. And I cannot even hear my hdd ever, and its temperature doesnt break 30 degrees. I had a 9 year old wd 1.6 gb hdd, it just died like a year ago....they make awesome harddrives.

 

[bobbydamm]

I have two Maxtor Ultra 16 HDD, one for each machine, and they have been the fastest thing I've had yet. Quiet, no chirping.
I would put it up near the Western Digital in 'happiness factor'.

 

[Fox_granit]

Working in a retail store repair shop for years, I've seen every single manufacturer fail. The one I have seen the fewest of is WD. I've owned every one of those manf. mentioned and all have failed execpt my WD. Over the ten years of experience i've had with HDs, the are my first pick, even if it costs me drive size. The quality has always been there. Thats my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

 

[Guest]

NEVER Seagte:

Look at this:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1050374/seagate-barracuda-7200-drives-failing
and the comments:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/comment/1050374/seagate-barracuda-7200-drives-failing

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That could also be nightmare to you, next time you start you PC with seagate in!!

-----------------
The most annoying thing is Seagate don't give an offical declaration and solution for that, just simply:
Ignore it--ignore them, ignore us!